Thursday, November 22, 2012

Analyzing Davis-Moore thesis.

The
Davis-Moore thesis has been made by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore in 1945.
According to this thesis social stratification has positive consequences for
the operation of a society. It makes the society productive and efficient.

According
to Davis-Moore thesis, more important jobs shall offer greater rewards.
Answering phone calls, bagging in a grocery store, or entering data on a computer
are fairly easy and can be done by almost anyone but jobs such as web
programming, accounting audition, or designing automobiles are more advance and
require personnel with sufficient trainings and experience. Greater rewards
create motivation for people in the society to educate themselves. This Process
can create an educated/skillful society.

One
thing that can lose its value in an egalitarian society is the quality of work.
According to Davis-Moore egalitarian society last as long as people let anyone
perform any job. Workers in an equal society will have little incentive to do
their best because everyone gets the same rewards regardless of any extra
effort. Why would corporate workers have any incentive for promotion when they
would get the same rewards with less responsibility? Why would factory workers
work extra time when they don’t get compensated for it? And why would anyone
want to work in a mine?

But to
what extent the stratification is beneficial? An average full-time employee at Starbucks
makes roughly $17,000 annually where as MR. Howard Shultz the CEO of Starbucks
makes more than $41 million a year2 the amount that would take 2,411
years for an average employee to make! Melvin Tumin(1953) criticized
Davis-Moore theses based on three reasoning: First, the invalid assessment of
job’s importance and misconnection between award given and contribution made. Second,
disregarding the cast element of social stratification. Third, augmenting
monetary values and diminishing humanitarian’s.

By studying Davis-Moore thesis one may object Tumin
criticisms. First, the Davis-Moore thesis does not suggest what reward a
society should give to any given job or how unequal the wealth should be
distributed. The thesis merely suggests more rewards for more important
positions in order to distinguish between different talents and create
incentives. Second, it is true that children of rich families are more
privileged but given a fairly equal educational opportunity everyone can have a
chance to progress. Third, people need money in order to trade goods and
services even in an egalitarian society. The only difference is the people in an
egalitarian society are confined in limitation where as in meritocracy there is
no limit.